Poems 6 and 7 - An astrophysicist has the Last Word

"Sitting on indented marble cuboid in front of entrance…"



It's definitely a text from Dr Gareth. And indeed, there he is sitting at the entrance to the British Library. I normally catch up with him in Wales, but he's passing through London on the way to a new assignment and I remember to ask him about the difference between a cosmologist and an astrophysicist.

I only do individual galaxies. I can only handle 10 billion stars at a time…

Good to have cleared that up. But 10 billion - per galaxy?

Well let's get this into perspective. I'm about to lift 1 billion, billion, billion atoms into the air..

He takes on a serious expression and lifts the water bottle.

Dr Gareth I've just realised you are the ideal person to comment on Rimelda Urban Mystica, because there's a verse that goes

'She wondered, as she held her broom
What lay beyond life's temporal room.
In a quantum physicist's particle spin,
She'd ask 'Which universe am I in?'

He smiles as he listens to the poem and when we get to the end he says

I could just imagine her clutching her broomstick about to take off on a flight of fancy.

Yet she's intent on her mission to reach for the real.

Yes, it evoked those moments when I’m thinking about mathematical mysteries and I’m on the brink of seeing how it works… If I could just see the connection… I’d see what it was all about. You hope you're on the brink of a wonderful new insight, but there's this danger of it being a false pattern.

I think the stand out line is "She spent the morning wondering when
She'd find the reason for purposeless Zen'.

Which reminds me. Did you hear the one about the Dalai Lama who goes into a pizza shop and asks the man at the counter - Can you make me one with everything?'

That's actually quite funny.

Well this is the line that reminded me of it

'She prayed that though Buddhists say all is one
She could still worship God as second to none.'

You can't help thinking that she's not going to find what she's looking for quite yet.

So how about Felicity Fastrack?

A girl on top with a mind to match her
Fewer U turns than Margaret Thatcher.

She had it all and delivered it too
She was GQ IQ babe come true.

Well she's so certain, she's leaving me way behind. She and Rimelda are poles apart.. Or rather quadrants apart

.

Quadrants?

They are at a right angle from each other. You see, things that are poles apart are actually quite similar.

Really?

Well, you know, the weather in the Arctic and Antarctica... or New Zealand and England... Similar. In fact I'd never thought of that before.

but now you mention it, I think they are in fact a bit similar because they are both pursuing types of power that leave them on a road out of reality.

I think that the fact that we are not God is the great message of Christianity. I do not have the responsibility of running the universe and yet I’m called to be a member of His body… I’m called to be as close to God as it is possible for a creature to be without becoming God. And that will do for me.

Dr Gareth became a catholic priest 10 years ago and has a unique style of preaching, you can also read his thoughts on the New Age here..